The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to
use the classic discussion system instead. If you login, you can remember this preference.

Please Log In to Continue

chromatic has a clear, persuasive way of writing. I'm increasingly awed by finding him on most every forum, pointing out factual inaccuracies in people's posts or comments. He has spent months arguing his points in eloquent posts on modernperlbooks.com [modernperlbooks.com].

In fact, I can't think of anyone in the Perl community who manages to keep to the facts and not mix in strawman or ad hominem arguments better than chromatic. So if he's a troll, we're all trolls.

My impression is that chromatic has been quite clear and forthright with his intentions. He has looked at how the Perl 5 project has been managed, done some root cause analysis, and proposed some improvements to the process based on what his own experiences have found working well.

Nothing wrong with that. I fact, we should thank chromatic for bothering to look at something that very few open source projects consider at all.

if he's right, then all of the people who have experience in maintaining perl 5 are wrong. Which seems very, very, unlikely, no?

No, I don't think that logic follows whatsoever. It's entirely possible that the way that Perl 5 has been doing things for years is not as good as the way(s) that chromatic is suggesting. What's more, what I've read of chromatic's arguments make sense.

...in your opinion. The reason his arguments have gained traction is he has managed to argue his point quite successfully, and most contrary views don't beyond name-calling. In your defense you have at least offered up some reasons for your viewpoint.

... and when told to shut up, politely at the time, he opened a blog to yell louder.

No thanks for being stubborn, sorry.

Telling anyone to shut up is never polite, regardless of intent. And (as mentioned below) what if he's right?

I replied at length and for years on P5P. He made the debate public when being tired of being told that he was wrong on a little mailing list.

I respect all the work you have done over the years on p5p, and I absolutely hate to see you resign. Hell, I agree with you on some things, but...

Do you read P5P ?

Yes I do, just not constantly. And retorts like that worry me, b/c if the prerequisite to voicing my opinion on the matter is whether or not I follow that particular heavily-trafficked mail list on a daily basis, then I guess I fail and should never attempt to discuss this nor other potential changes to p5 again.

Maybe this is a matter of interpretation, but chromatic's posts appear to me as an attempt to get his thoughts out there, and provide some constructive criticism. I haven't seen them as starting fights or intentionally trying to make anybody mad.

Let's try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and cut out the accusations of trolling and FUD. It's certainly not helping anything.